I am a writer...well, not yet anyway. But soon I will be there. I mean, it is not a place, you know. Not a physical place. But still one refers to it as 'there', 'over there', and so on. 'I have come, Malaysia,' exclaimed a man, who thought he had 'achieved his goal of doing business there'. We use physical things to refer to our psychological states. I say that I am a writer when some of my writings are published, not until then. So, it is really a matter of time and not a place at all. And yet, we use the metaphor of a place. When we travel, we await the destination. It takes time to reach. The goal is much like a physical destination. It takes time to achieve one's goal. Attainment of a goal is in this sense an arrival at a destination.
There are, to be sure, many such metaphors which are used in the psychological realm without so much as a thought. It is definitely very easy to express oneself and also be assured of being understood. But as it always happens when one uses metaphors there is a catch. If one takes the example literally of reaching one's destination, one is absolutely certain that it exists. In the thought world however the goal is ephemeral. It is not something one can see on a map. It has no routes to take one there. There is no GPS to guide one to the place. We don't even know that it exists. And yet, we say happily, unchallenged, 'I am going to be there one day.'
What exactly is the problem with using such a metaphor? First, it gives me the feeling that the goal is out there and I am here. That it takes time to reach. Never for a moment does it occur to me that the goal is a figment of my imagination. It is something that exists only in my mind. That, it has no reference to anything that is out there in the physical world. That, it is neither near, nor far from me. That, in fact it has nothing to do with time at all, since there is absolutely no movement involved! That, it is just a chimera. To borrow another metaphor from the physical world, it is like an oasis in a desert.
This is something that needs more investigation. Simply put, this urge to achieve, to attain, is a becoming. From a non-writer, I want to become a writer. The implication here is that from one state of being I want to move into another state. This change of state needs to be measured, to be quantified, to be monitored. Measuring movement is what we know very well. It is what we do everyday. It is what we use in going from home to place of work, from the earth to the moon and so on. This is a way that we have discovered to fulfill our desires, aspirations, ambitions. It is something we do automatically. We don't even think about it. This movement is not a physical movement and we know it. Whenever we desire something, we are on a journey in time. We just exchange space for time. The body after all lives in space and the mind lives in time.
This way of thinking begs the questions: why do we think this way? What is the implication of thinking this way?
Why do we think this way? That is how the brain is wired to function, I suppose. There could be a scientific explanation for it, perhaps even a psychological one. The answer could be simply this: it is the only way we know. There could be other ways, but as humans we all think this way and we have not found any other way. We don't even know if there is another way of thinking.
To answer the question 'what the implication is of thinking in the way we do', we have sufficient evidence. We may have to start exploring more into this movement in the mind in order to unravel the implication.
We have seen that a state of change involves a psychological movement from one state to another. We may seek a change of state because we are not happy with our present state. We are not happy because it is not satisfying, it is not profitable, it is not edifying, it is not lucrative, it is not considered important, it is lacking in power, it has a social stigma and so on and so on. The reason could be anything, even more than one. We have decided to stop being what we are and have resolved to become something else.
We are aware that it is not easy to change one's state. It involves much hardship and demands perseverance. It means struggle, frustration, fear and many other feelings we may experience once we have embarked on this journey of change of state. 'Embark' is a nautical word and journey is what changes our location. It is the movement that we are talking about. All the feelings that we encounter while on a physical journey we experience in our psychological endeavor too. By thinking in terms of a physical metaphor we have primed ourselves to experience similar thoughts and feelings. Thoughts and feelings that we must have experienced in the beginning of time when we evolved from animal into human form. It is a question of survival in the jungle all over again, but this time in a jungle of our own making. It is not surprising that the phrase survival of the fittest still applies in the environment that we have built over millennia.
In order to overcome the difficulties in the attainment of our desired state, we have devised means as diverse as the species on earth. We employ power derived from position, wealth, status and knowledge in the achievement of our goals. We have devised laws to curtail excesses in the use of the artifices afore-mentioned, but there are always some among us who are more clever and enterprising in defying those laws and creating new laws to justify our actions. The world we have built is the movement of desire in all of us.
Desire is a movement of the mind from one state to another. It is in this movement that we live all our waking moments and in sleep too as dreams. It is desire that is the motive power behind our world. Our world is desire in action. Our pleasure and our pain is the desire fulfillment or desire denial. All our feelings are encompassed in this single movement triggered by desire.
The implication of thinking in terms of physical metaphors is the birth of this world we live in, the world that is just as beautiful, as dangerous and as inscrutable as the physical world around us. We have built a parallel world and there is no escape from it. The force of desire is as strong as the force of gravity. We may occasionally fly out of its influence - like the artists do sometimes, or the enlightened ones - but return we must to its haunt willy-nilly.
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